Positive Thought

A grandfather was attempting to impress upon his grandchildren that things were not always as they appeared. “When I was your age,” he began, “my daddy raised a beautiful, large vegetable garden. We would sell the produce at a small roadside stand that we built ourselves.

My parents always bought their chickens from Willy Scott.

One day, while our family was working at the vegetable stand, Willy delivered chickens to our house in a crate and left them on our doorstep. When we returned home that evening we discovered the chickens had escaped and were running all over the yard. Each of us began chasing the chickens and putting them back in the crate. Dad was upset and decided to call Willy to express his unhappiness with the situation.

I can still remember Dad telling Willy he didn’t think it was a very good idea to leave the chickens in a crate unattended while we were gone. He told Willy how the family had to round-up chickens from all over the neighborhood and we were only able to find eleven. Then Willy shocked my dad.”

The story, above, is from one of my favorite books, “Speaker’s Sourcebook II: Quotes, Stories, & Anecdotes for Every Occasion,” by Glenn Van Ekeren. Can you imagine the look on the dad’s face? – I’m sure the scowl softened into a smile pretty fast. We’ve all been in his shoes before, right? Something will come along and we’re convinced that fate has kicked us harder than it’s ever kicked anyone. Then, just as we’re in the process of getting what my grandmother always referred to as “worked up,” we realize that fate didn’t kick us.

It kissed us.

Someone once said that opportunities are like roses – they often come with thorns on them. The same is true of blessings. They’re very fond of entering our lives in disguise…. just a little game they like to play.

Pregnancy and childbirth are a couple of great examples. When I was pregnant with my first daughter (Emily), I thought I was smack in the middle of the most unpleasant experience in the world. Morning sickness? Ha! It was ALL DAY sickness and it didn’t last for the just first 3 months, either. Nooo, my “morning sickness” lasted each of the nine months.

All day. Every day.

Top that off with incredible back pain, swollen aching feet, heartburn, and shortness of breath and I was one miserable “preggie.”

Then the labor pains came and I just KNEW I was in an inner circle of hell! But as soon as they handed me this unbelievably beautiful little baby girl with the biggest, bluest eyes in the world – I knew my life would never be the same. I hadn’t been kicked by life, I’b been kissed by life with a little pink angel.

By the time beautiful number 2 (Brittany) and beautiful number 3 (Stephany) came along I knew that the horrors would be completely forgotten as soon as I held my baby in my arms.

Think back over your own life. Some of the best things that ever happened to you may have made an ugly entrance. Maybe they stumbled onto the platform, but rocked your world once they got to center stage. Sometimes it’s best to remember these things, so the next time something ugly comes our way we can ask, “What kind of beauty lies beneath this beast?”

Looking for the good in every bad is, from a self help standpoint, priceless.

Moods are powerful. Not only do they affect our mindset – that is, our sense of optimism and pessimism – they also play a role in our overall health. Studies have shown that people in depressive states have greater instances of heart disease, and there is also a strong correlation between negative moods and other diseases like autoimmune disorders.
To understand how moods affect health, let’s explore something called the fight-or-flight response.

Fight-or-Flight
Stress causes a very specific set of physical symptoms including:

Dry mouth

Rapid heartbeat

Shallow breathing

Cold sweats

Clammy extremities, and

Gastro-intestinal distress.

Stress can also trigger your immune system to stop making the antibodies that help you fight disease. That’s because when your brain registers stress, it triggers the fight-or-flight response, which causes the body to direct all its energy toward survival.

Fight-or-flight is only intended to be a temporary response. Once the danger has passed you should release hormones that allow you to relax and return to normal. Unfortunately, many of us live in a constant state of fight-or-flight, and that takes a direct toll on our health.

Interestingly, your body will go into fight-or-flight regardless of the source of stress. So, a saber-toothed tiger will trigger that response, but so will a stressful work environment, riding a rollercoaster, and sexual arousal. The only difference is our perception of the stress, and there are even different words to describe the different perceptions: eustress and distress.

Eustress is stress that causes positive emotions. The rollercoaster and sexual arousal are generally considered fun or exciting, and they create a positive association and positive emotions.

Distress is stress that causes negative emotions. The tiger and stressful job are generally considered dangerous or unpleasant, and they create negative association and negative emotions.

Eustress doesn’t usually have the same effect on health, even though it triggers the same physiological response as distress. So it appears that the actual emotions, or moods, associated with the stress play an important role.

Improving Mood and Health
Improving your mood is about more than just positive thinking. In fact, positive thinking is really the last part of the process – something that happens after you have overcome other obstacles. For many of us the biggest obstacle could be learning to recognize negative though patters and turn them around. However, there are also those who need a little more help.

Chemical Imbalances
Most human beings are emotional creatures, and those emotions play a large role in how we perceive ourselves and relate to others. While it’s easy to say “just let it go,” it’s often much harder to do. For one thing, much of our emotional response is directly tied to a complex, and delicately balanced, series of brain chemicals called neurotransmitters. There are people for whom those neurotransmitters become unbalanced, and no amount of mental exercises can help them release negative emotions. They have to correct the chemical imbalance before they can get their heads into a positive space, and that usually involves taking medication.

Energy Imbalances
There is also the issue of energy. The entire human nervous system is a complex electrical grid that transmits electrical impulses between neurons, and also creates an energy field around your body. This energy field is why machines like the electrocardiogram (EKC) and electroencephalogram (EEG) can read your heart beat and brain waves just by placing electric sensors on your skin. However, the same way that neurotransmitters can become unbalanced, so can the electrical energy field around your body become disrupted, making it difficult to release negative emotions. People with disrupted energy often need an energy healer before they can get their heads into a positive space.

Serious or Chronic Illness
In the introduction we mentioned that there was a correlation between certain diseases and depression. One thing that you have to remember is that correlation does not always mean causation. That is, while it could be said that people with bad mindsets get sick, but it could also be that people who are sick develop bad mindsets as a direct result of their diseases.

For example, stress might trigger heart disease, but heart disease can also cause fatigue, pain, and shortness and other symptoms that can interfere with daily life, which can be emotionally depressing. Autoimmune diseases can also cause fatigue and, depending on the organs affected, can also cause chemical imbalances that lead to depression.

People coping with serious or chronic illnesses often need to focus first on getting a handle on their illnesses before they think about changing their head space. In fact, trying to force positivity might actually create more distress and negative emotions.

These words – and many more – all describe the same basic premise and the same basic truth: Comfort, and even strength, are often found amongst like-minded individuals.

This isn’t groundbreaking information, of course. Since the beginning of time, people have realized that there’s strength in numbers. They’ve also known that hanging out with people who have similar interests, goals, and situations to your own provides you with a comforting feeling of normalcy.

Ironically, as I’m typing these words, there are 6 doves on my windowsill. (I keep birdseed and black sunflower seeds on the windowsill beside my computer desk. This, combined with bird and squirrel feeders in our yard provide me with endless little cuties to distract me throughout the day. Jury’s still out on whether that’s actually a good thing or a bad thing.) While there are exceptions, generally speaking, doves will show up to dine together. I’ve never had, say, a cardinal and dove show up together.

Birds of a feather, literally, flock together. Even nature knows the strength and safety that comes from community.

As I said in a recent post about Finding Silver Linings, my body has decided that it can no longer tolerate gluten (a protein found in… well… many things) in any way what-so-ev-er. It calls the shots, so I’ve had to change my relationship with food entirely – the way I eat, cook, and even think about food is now completely different from the way I had for my entire life. Suffice to say that “entire” encompasses a healthy number of birthday candles over the years. And, no, I don’t want to think about the bonfire they could combine to build.

Early on in my Gluten Free world, I found a wonderful key to sanity and happiness: Surrounding myselfwith others who trudging along the gluten free trail.

Moving hundreds of these people into our home seemed extreme, so I simply found other ways to build my own private little support group:

On Twitter and Pinterest, I searched out Gluten Free Magazines, Gluten Free Food Manufacturers, authors, and website accounts and followed them. Then I looked at different accounts that interacted with them and chose certain ones to follow as well. Soon my Twitter timeline and Pinterest feed were filled with recipes, tips, encouragement, ideas, food reviews, etc.

I signed up for different e-newsletters from these same experts – now my inbox is also a wealth of information and inspiration.

There are several Gluten Free magazines I want to subscribe to and I’ve started a cool collection of Gluten Free cookbooks.

Doing all of the above had several benefits:

I was able to see scads of smiling people who weren’t only living with their dietary limitations but seemed to love it.

I’ve lost count of the number of great ideas I’ve come across that I would NO WAY have come up with on my own.

There’s a lot to be said for feeling like you’re part of a community.

It’s exhausting to always have to check products and recipes for gluten – when I see e-mails, tweets, and pins from these “safe havens,” it takes the guess work out of it and I feel almost normal. Okay, normal for me.

Naturally “gluten free” birds aren’t the only kind of birds available for flocking. Any area of interest, conviction, employment, aspiration, hobbies, dreams, causes, or needs you have can be supported and strengthened by finding like-minded people. Simply replace “gluten free” in the 3 examples above with your own personal subject….

parenting

cats

Christianity

dogs

self help

sales and marketing

adoption

blogging

writing

photography

empty nest syndrome

weight loss

vegetarianism

loneliness

leadership

yoga

pilates

meditation

paleo diet

wildlife preservation

tea reviews

bird watching

college tips

etc. etc. etc…

This is one of those things in life that, while it seems so obvious and even simple,can make a big difference in your life.

Tip: “Hacks” is a GREAT search term (Google or Twitter) to use behind your area of interest – for example “college hacks,” “weight loss hacks,” “saving money hacks,” etc.

My World Famous Buttermilk Biscuits – OK, “World Famous” is pushing it but still..

No way…. Are you kidding me?!….. Talk about a kick in the pants…. SO out of left field… Nah, can’t be… This is a huge deal… My wold just got turned upside down… This might be the worst thing that has happened to me in a while… —- Okay… Not that big a deal.. Talk about a wake-up call… Should have seen it coming… It is what it is.. This isn’t a huge deal… My world just got turned upside right… This might be the best thing that has happened to me in a while.

Looks, for all the world, like one bi-polar paragraph doesn’t it? It’s sort of a modge podge of my thoughts over the past 7 months, so – in a sense – I guess my emotions were kind of bi-polar for a while.

As I’ve often said on this particular blog as well as my other blogs, I don’t AT ALL like to talk about myself. I guess that’s odd for an only child, but I get nothing out of discussing moi. Someone’s not doing this “only child” thing right. However, I figure that if anyone can ever be helped (in any way at all) by my personal experiences I won’t just talk about it, I’ll sing about it.

So here we go.

Around the end of the year (2013), my oldest daughter (Emily) began having some pretty frightening health issues. Earlier in the year she’d had gallbladder surgery and, as an over-protective mother, I guess I’d been watching her like a hawk anyway. She began to have insane allergic reactions – to the point of her throat swelling up sometimes when she was eating. This was all on top of stomach issues that were also bothering her, but somehow the upset stomach took a backseat to the feelings of chocking to death.

Like I said, scary stuff.

She and I both suspected she had a gluten intolerance/allergy and it was decided that she’d do an “elimination” diet for a few weeks to see if her symptoms cleared up. I decided to “go along” with her for a couple of weeks – to sort of “get her started on her way” and give her support. I was pretty sure this was a diet that she’d have to stick with for GOOD, so I wanted to walk along with her – at least the first part of the way – to help her find recipes, alternatives on restaurant menus, gluten free products on the market, etc.

Her allergy and digestive problems cleared up almost immediately. It’s actually what we both expected to happen, but we were relieved to know there was something she could do to get better. What no one expected was this: It was exactly two weeks into our gluten elimination that it hit me… I felt better than I had in a long time. I’m the proud (sarcasm emphasized) owner of a hiatal hernia and I have whackadoodle allergies and bronchial asthma…. all of which vastly improved during this two week time. I had more energy, less stomach aches, less gassiness, less bloating, less allergy attacks, fewer asthma episodes, less hunger, etc. Mouth sores healed and vanished, and other “little” things I’d somehow learned to kind of ignore disappeared.

But there’s more. I had experienced stomach and digestive issues for some time – issues that were slowly, but surely, getting worse. I always had an excuse for them, though. It’s the hiatal hernia, it’s my thyroid medicine, it’s all part of aging, etc….

I went back and re-read all the articles I’d read when researching Emily’s symptoms and realized that mine were also listed. But I hadn’t been looking for them. When a mother hen is on a mission, she sees her chick and only her chick… in this case, a sick chick!

It became obvious to both of us that we had to stop eating gluten – which is, as it turns out, in A LOT of things! A. Lot. Of. Things. Not only is gluten found in the usual suspect lineup – bread, cornbread, pizza, doughnuts (this one stings the most), fried chicken, fried everything, and anything breaded – it also turns up in soy sauce, a lot of salad dressings, every store-bought soup imaginable, taco seasoning, and 101 other places you wouldn’t even think to look for it… until it means the difference between having pain and not having pain. Then you learn to look everywhere.

Although the whole “going gluten free” thing didn’t shatter my world (by any means), it did feel like an annoying thorn in my finger.

I’ve been an avid cook, food blogger, cookbook collector, restaurant reviewer, Food Network addict, and lover of all things food for too many years to even count. To add to the misery, guess what some of my favorite things to make have always been – homemade bread, buttermilk biscuits, cornbread, pancakes, cakes, cupcakes, pies, and pastries. Serious. You can’t make this stuff up. I was so cocky about my buttermilk biscuits that I only allowed real butter to EVER be served with them. And then I told butter it was an honor it shouldn’t take lightly.

So… yeah…. having to change my entire way of eating and enjoying food disrupted my culinary world. Kind of turned it on its head, if we’re being honest.

Favorite restaurants had to be scratched off the list, certain cookbooks were handed off to other people, and I had to learn a whole new way of cooking and enjoying food. I found that even something as simple as enjoying Food Network shows was affected. It’s not a gluten free network, after all, so the frustration of seeing so many things that meant zilch to me anymore became more than I was willing to deal with. Oh, lovely, she’s making doughnuts today… Fantastic, he’s visiting another burger restaurant… And now he’s in a Pizza dive.. Of course he is.

Thanks, but no thanks.

Turning the Corner

As with just about anything that we’re up against, it finally got to the point where I realized it wasn’t SOMETHING that needed to change, but rather SOMEONE who needed to change. Besides, I couldn’t change my body’s intolerance to gluten any more than I could change the fact that it’s in so many favorite foods to eat, bake, and cook.

I had a brief, but effective, talk with myself and decided that…. what do you know…. this isn’t the end of the world. I decided that it really wasn’t the END of anything so much as it was the BEGINNING of something.

Put simply, I turned the corner.

I even decided to stop using “negatives” when I thought or spoke. Instead of saying, “I can’t bake my favorite sourdough bread anymore…” I changed my mindset to, “It’s time to come up with new recipes…. this’ll be fun.”

Instead of dwelling on foods I can’t eat, I’m focusing on the ones I can. When it comes to traveling through life, Can is a much more pleasant companion than Can’t.

Can sees the rainbow where can’t only sees the storm.

Emily and I were even talking about our new way of eating one day and actually found ourselves being thankful for the change.

No kidding.

We both listed the unhealthy foods we’d recently had to give up, including the frequent fast food trips. Like most people, we’d both found ourselves going through drive-thrus more out of habit than hunger. No longer feasting on fast and fatty foods meant that we were actually eating healthier than ever before – while feeling better than ever before.

Win. Win.

Even more surprising is the fact that, not only was going gluten free a blessing for our health, it has proven to actually be a blessing for my cooking adventures.

I can’t tell you how many meals I’ve made that left my husband and I convinced that the food’s better than ever. From Salmon Patties to Belgian Waffles, I’ve worked with my “gluten free” versions to the point that they’re actually better than the ones I used to make.

Even my meals are better because this way of cooking/eating has opened up a whole new world of flavors and creativity. It’s bringing out the best in me because it has challenged me. If I’d just kind of moped around I would have never seen the silver lining.

It’s when I turned the corner that I could finally see it. It had been there the whole time, but I HAD TO BUDGE to actually see it.

What’s more, when my daughter and I started talking about the benefits of eating gluten free, a benefit we both noticed was an unexpected one: We aren’t as hungry as we once were. I’m not sure if it’s tied in to gluten, itself, or or the intolerance of it, but cutting it out seems to also cut out a lot of hunger.

I’m pretty sure the odds are that you have no intolerance, whatsoever, to gluten. Chances are none of the gluten information is relevant to you in any way. However, I will say this: If you have any unexplained allergies, stomach issues (bloating, pain, frequent gas, a “gnawing” discomfort, etc), unexplained weight gain or loss, excessive tiredness, headaches, or mouth sores – give some serious thought to cutting gluten out of your diet entirely for two weeks. If the way you feel suddenly improves… well, welcome to the club!

If you don’t notice any improvement at all (not even a little), the culprit’s probably something else and a trip to the doctor is probably in order.

Either way, gluten (cursed little demon) isn’t really the main thing here. Silver linings are the star of the show. Whether it’s in plain sight or you have to “turn a corner” in order to see it, once you see your silver lining, life will never be the same again.

No matter what life hands you, always look for the silver lining and never stop looking until you find it. More times than not, it’s a delicious surprise.

“Feelings, by themselves, do not create problems. It is rather the tendency to interpret and analyze them. When out of habit you believe those interpretations, it is there that the suffering begins.” – Mooji

Always be on guard for Stinkin’ Thinkin’. – Joi

Mooji’s description of the whole process is a lot more elegant than my own, but when all’s said and done, stinkin’ thinkin’ gets the job done, too.

We all know people who would be a lot happier (and, let’s face it, funner to be around) if they stopped allowing their minds to be breeding grounds for worrisome, negative, destructive, and ugly thoughts. Stinkin’ thinkin‘. As Mooji points out, the feelings we have about other people or situations don’t always create the problems – we do by dwelling on them.

The hundreds of feelings we have throughout the day are just that… feelings. Like visitors, they come and go. How we deal with them, while in their presence, strongly affects our mindset, and in turn, our happiness.

Thoughts can either be our best companions or our worst – depending entirely upon which ones we entertain. We should be as mindful of our thoughts as we are the company we keep. Just as we would never hang around with anyone who did nothing but complain, criticize, and condemn all the time, we should refuse to hang out with thoughts that do so. Because if we aren’t careful, these thoughts will turn us into those people.

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When you see an article labeled “Articles by Other Authors,” this means the post is either a sponsored post or a post by a freelance writer, looking to build his/her online portfolio. All posts written by me are signed with my name ~ Joi.

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